Showing posts with label Nuclear weapon. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Building cement 'prison' for old radioactive waste

January 11, 2011 By Sandra Chung Building cement ‘prison' for old radioactive waste

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Bacteria and hard water can give heavy metals a hard time. Scientists coax underground microbes to turn calcium-rich water and urea into a stony underground trap for contaminants.

The Cold War ended long ago, but its radioactive legacy still lingers in the water and soil of the western United States. Between 1950 and 1990, nuclear weapons materials production and processing at several federal facilities generated billions of gallons of water contaminated with radioactive byproducts.

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US tried to protect 3 in CIA nuclear spy effort: book

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_tried_to_protect_3_in_CIA_nuclear_spy_effort_book_999.html Washington (AFP) Jan 10, 2011 The United States pressured Swiss authorities not to prosecute three people suspected of weapons trafficking who had been helping a CIA spy effort, according to a book released this month. In the book "Fallout: The True Story of the CIA's Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking," authors Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz argue that pressure helped avoid prosecution of Friedrich, Urs and Marco Tinner, a father and two sons suspected of helping Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb.
"Senior members of the George W. Bush administration and US intelligence officials intervened at the highest level of the Swiss government to pressure it to destroy evidence in a criminal investigation of nuclear trafficking," the authors said.
"The Americans also used their influence to persuade the Swiss to abandon plans to prosecute six CIA agents for espionage."
According to the book, CIA agents in 2003 copied the contents of a computer of Marco Tinner, where they found plans for a Chinese atomic weapon from the 1960s and documents from the Pakistani nuclear program.
The CIA was trying to scope out the Khan network, which is believed to have sold nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea, according to the book.
The authors said the CIA in 1999 recruited as an informant Urs Tinner, who had been directing construction of a uranium enrichment plant for Libya. The father and brother were recruited later.
The three Tinners were arrested in 2004 by Swiss authorities who seized computers with much of this information.
But after repeated pressure from Washington, which did not want to compromise the spy effort, Switzerland destroyed the documents in 2008. The pressure came from the highest levels in Washington, including then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
"The conversation was conducted in the polite language of international diplomacy, but the meaning was clear: if the Swiss didn't dispose of the cases against the Tinners and the CIA, the United States would portray them as a hindrance to worldwide counterproliferation efforts and roll out the years of warnings that went unheeded by Swiss officials," the book said.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran Eric S. Edelman, Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr, and Evan Braden Montgomery

The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran

Eric S. Edelman, Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr, and Evan Braden Montgomery

Iran's acquisition of a nuclear bomb would upend the Middle East. It is unclear how a nuclear-armed Iran would weigh the costs, benefits, and risks of brinkmanship, meaning that it could be difficult to deter Tehran from attacking the United States' interests or partners in the region. Read

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The Substitution Fallacy: Why the United States Cannot Fully Substitute Conventional for Nuclear Weapons by Elbridge Colby

This guest submission arrives from Elbridge Colby, who offered it to New Paradigms Forum in the wake of Dr. Ford's December 19, 2010, posting on conventional weapons as a potential “replacement” for nuclear ones. Colby and Ford both participated in the November 17, 2010, conference on “Conventional Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. This is Colby's own take on the issue.

Elbridge Colby has served in several national security positions with the U.S. Government, most recently with the Department of Defense working on the follow-on to the START Treaty and as an expert advisor to the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission. The views expressed in this essay are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of any institution with which he is or has been affiliated.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Swiss Nuclear Smuggling Family Tied to CIA

Swiss Nuclear Smuggling Family Tied to CIA
http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/swiss-nuclear-smuggling-family-tied-to-cia/

A seven-year effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to hide its relationship
with a Swiss family who once acted as moles inside the world’s most
successful atomic black market hit a turning point on Thursday when a Swiss
magistrate recommended charging the men with trafficking in technology and
information [...]

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Four-Year Nuclear Security Plan Needs More Detail, GAO Says

Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010

http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20101216_6900.php

The Obama administration should address in more specific terms how it plans to achieve its goal of securing all loose nuclear material in the world within four years, congressional investigators said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, April 14).
The National Security Council has signed off on a comprehensive approach for the material security plan "that describes the scope and objectives of the interagency effort and identifies the main efforts by U.S. agencies and programs to support the initiative," according to a summary of the Government Accountability Office report.
"However, this interagency strategy lacks specific details concerning how the initiative will be implemented, including the identity of vulnerable foreign nuclear material sites and facilities to be addressed, agencies and programs responsible for addressing each site, planned activities at each location, potential challenges and strategies for overcoming those obstacles, anticipated time lines, and cost estimates," according to the document. "As a result, key details associated with the initiative are unclear, including its overall estimated cost, time frame, and scope of planned work."
Congressional auditors found that two Energy Department nonproliferation programs -- the Materials Consolidation and Conversion program and the Global Threat Reduction Initiative -- have worked to lock down Russia's nuclear warheads and supplies less effectively than the department's Material Protection, Control and Accounting program (see GSN, Dec 13).
Moscow's uncertain dedication to joint U.S.-Russian nuclear threat reduction work has placed in question the future of the three programs, all of which are overseen by the Energy Department's semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, the report asserts.
The MPC&A effort faced an uphill drive to augment measures for protecting a number of Russian atomic sites against internal and external security risks and turning responsibility for the new safeguards over to Moscow, the document states. The difficulties were likely to prevent compliance with a U.S. legal mandate that Russia fully take over the MPC&A program by the start of 2013, the report says. The auditors urged the Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration to develop a more precise breakdown of the initiative's uncompleted objectives and anticipated expenses in Russia.
In China and India, political concerns have restricted NNSA nuclear security activities to the exchange of security best practices, training and demonstration efforts, the report notes.
The Energy Department agency was moving forward in negotiations with South Africa, Ukraine and other nations to expedite the removal of potential nuclear bomb ingredients within their borders, the auditors found (U.S. Government Accountability Office release, Dec. 15).

U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable

U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable -- New York Times

Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don’t come out till officials say it’s safe.

The advice is based on recent scientific analyses showing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even staying in a car, the studies show, would reduce casualties by more than 50 percent; hunkering down in a basement would be better by far.

Read more ....http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/science/16terror.html?ref=us

Monday, December 13, 2010

IANS IAEA to help Bangladesh build N-power plant

Dhaka, Dec 13 (IANS) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will extend all-out support to Bangladesh in setting up a nuclear power plant, visiting director general of the global nuclear watchdog Yukiya Anano said Monday.
'Bangladesh is an excellent partner of the IAEA. We will help the country strengthen the nuclear infrastructure and capacity building to set up the power plant,' he said.
http://sify.com/news/iaea-to-help-bangladesh-build-n-power-plant-news-international-kmnt4sfagbh.html

Friday, December 10, 2010

Indonesia Could be Major Regional Player in Nuclear Power: IAEA Official Jennifer Jett

Jakarta. Indonesia is well positioned to develop nuclear power should it choose to, an international nuclear energy official visiting Jakarta said on Friday.

Glyn Davies, in his first trip to Indonesia as United States representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this week, said that Indonesia is among nations with the best nuclear infrastructure in Southeast Asia.

He said this infrastructure included research reactors and trained personnel.

“Indonesia is a regional leader, in fact to such a great extent that other countries sometimes come to Indonesia and poach the talent that’s here — the physicists and the others that have been built up over the decades,” he said. More at link:
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesia-could-be-major-regional-player-in-nuclear-power-iaea-official/411074

Global Insights: One Step Forward, One Back for Nuclear Nonproliferation By: Richard Weitz | Column

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/7244/global-insights-one-step-forward-one-back-for-nuclear-nonproliferation

Two developments this week illustrated the "one step forward, one step back" nature of global nuclear nonproliferation efforts. On the one hand, Iran announced further progress in its domestic nuclear program, increasing Tehran's potential ability to make nuclear weapons. On the other, the IAEA voted to establish the first completely multinational nuclear fuel bank.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

North Korea’s Newest Weapon: Nuke Torpedo?

Just when you thought it was safe to take a dip in the West Sea, a report from North Korean dissidents claims that Pyongyang has already developed sea-borne nuclear weapons.
If you read Korean, you can find their report here, but if not, Bill Gertz at the Washington Times has the gist. Citing a Pyongyang government official, the defectors claim that in March 2009, North Korean military units called “Thunder” and “Lightning” began technical nuclear torpedo and mine research to blunt the superiority of U.S. and South Korean naval weaponry. They claim that the “nuclear mines are technologically at a stage of completion, and the plan [is] to finish [developing] nuclear torpedoes by 2012.” North Korea is believed to have fewer than ten nuclear bombs.
Now the caveats. U.S. intelligence officials have yet to check out the claim, Gertz reports, and Gertz’s reporting can be rather alarmist about east-Asian threats. The North’s record at testing nuclear weapons is spotty at best. Defectors have been known to inflate the threat from their home regimes. According to the defectors, one of the reasons Pyongyang wants the deep-sea nukes is to deter the U.S. from interfering in a potential Korean war. But it hasn’t boasted about developing them — even as U.S. warships recently drilled with the South Koreans after the North’s artillery attack three weeks ago, and the top U.S. military officer just left Kim Jong-il’s backyard on a trip to bolster the anti-Nork coalition. Hard to see how the U.S. could be deterred by something it doesn’t know about.

Still, over at the U.S. Naval Institute’s blog, Raymond Pritchett observes that a recent WikiLeaked cable cited a Chinese diplomat’s claim that Pyongyang kept “critical information about secret underwater nuclear facilities located on North Korea’s coast” hidden from Kim’s big Chinese patron. (Although that cable is from 2008, from 2008, seemingly before the supposed launch of the North’s nuke torpedo and mine program.)
These weapons are familiar to the U.S. Starting in the 1960s, its subs carried the Mark 45 and Mark 48 nuclear torpedoes, 19-foot-long weapons designed to take out Soviet nuclear subs with 11-kiloton yields. Moscow’s family of countermeasures, known as the Type 53-68 HWT, had 20-kiloton yields. Gertz notes that the Chinese navy has been intrigued by nuclear torpedoes lately, leading him to collect this awesome quote from defense wonk Richard Fisher: “China’s strategy is simply to have us negotiate with North Korea and Iran until its nuclear weapons start to kill us.”
OK then. It’s possible we may get some clarity on the alleged nuclear torpedo and mine programs. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a frequent diplomatic backchannel to the North Koreans, is headed to Pyongyang at “the invitation of key people in the nuclear crowd over there,” according to the Washington Post Presumably they’ll want to talk about the North’s recent declaration of a new uranium-enrichment facility, but it’s the perfect opportunity to make additional nuclear boasts.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Obama's India visit: The nuclear outcome By J. Sri Raman

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/obamas-india-visit-the-nuclear-outcome

Article Highlights

The joint statement issued between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offers insight into the future relationship -- and mutual understandings -- between the two nations.
India signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, which assuaged the fears for US suppliers that India's nuclear damages act would harm future business deals.
The nuclear deal between the US and India leave questions as to whether this is a relationship to promote nuclear disarmament or one to legitimize India's nuclear weapons program.

Prioritizing Nuclear Nonproliferation By: Justin Alger | ISN Security Watch

Prioritizing Nuclear Nonproliferation

A sign warning from radiation, courtesy of Ed Siasoco/flickr

A warning sign at the Trinity site where the first nuclear explosion took place

With concerns about potential nuclear threats from Iran, North Korea and aspiring nuclear terrorists, nuclear weapons seem to have as much prominence on the security agenda as they did during the Cold War. Giving them such notoriety may, however, be doing more harm than good.More at:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/ISN-Insights/Detail?lng=en&ots627=fce62fe0-528d-4884-9cdf-283c282cf0b2&id=124751&contextid734=124751&contextid735=124750&tabid=124750

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Russia opens world's first nuclear fuel bank

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=247854211242866212 Moscow (AFP) Dec 1, 2010 Russia announced Wednesday that it had created the world's first international atomic fuel bank as part of a global effort to curb the spread of nuclear arms to nations such as North Korea and Iran. The Rosatom state atomic energy corporation said the Siberian fuel reserve -- which will operate under the auspices of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog -- will have enough material to refuel two civilian nuclear power plants.
"The purpose of this facility is to reduce the risk of other countries processing their own uranium to a minimum," former Foreign Intelligence Service chief Gennady Yevstafyev told AFP. "This will dramatically improve control over the proliferation of nuclear weapons."
The Angarsk bank is the first of about a dozen facilities proposed by various nations following the 2003 discovery of covert enrichment activity in Iran.
The plant now stores 120 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (LEU) that has been enriched to between two and 4.95 percent. Scientists say it can satisfy the electricity needs of a 12-million-strong city for up to a year.
The fuel is considered safe because the weapons-grade uranium desired by nations seeking to build nuclear weapons must be enriched to at least 90 percent.
The IAEA approved the Russian reserve's creation at a historic but contentious two-day meeting in November.
The type of fuel stored in Angarsk is used by most of today's civilian nuclear power plants. Russia first proposed the idea to the IAEA in September 2007 amid fears here that supply cutoffs could be used by Western nations for political purposes.
"This bank was created under the Russian president's initiative to form a global nuclear energy infrastructure (that would ensure) reliable compliance with the nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime," Rosatom said in a statement.
Then-president Vladimir Putin first forwarded the nuclear fuel bank initiative in January 2006 amid a resumption of nuclear dialogue between Russia and the United States.
Moscow and Washington signed their own peaceful nuclear cooperation deal -- known as the 123 Agreement -- two years later and the two sides then both pushed for the bank's approval at the IAEA.
The idea was backed by 23 of the 35 IAEA members at the Vienna meeting but opposed by countries such as Brazil and Pakistan that are just beginning to establish their own nuclear programmes.
"The main problem with nuclear energy is that countries try to develop their own nuclear fuel cycles," Yevstafyev said in reference to the independent production and enrichment of uranium -- an ability perfected by a limited group of states.
"And this cycle is then turned around and focused on developing nuclear weapons. This plant should help stop that."
The Angarsk announcement comes one week after Russia and the IAEA signed a separate agreement on developing a joint training programme for nuclear experts who could then be employed at the various facilities across Russia.
Officials here have voiced fears that they no longer have the scientists and experts they did in the Soviet era to safely operate the country's vast network of nuclear facilities.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Nukes WikiLeak 'illegal, irresponsible and dangerous': NATO

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Nukes_WikiLeak_illegal_irresponsible_and_dangerous_NATO_999.html Brussels (AFP) Nov 30, 2010 NATO slammed Tuesday the release of confidential US files revealing where the United States has deployed nuclear weapons in Europe as "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous," spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said. "As a matter of policy we won't comment on classified information and we strongly condemn the leaking of confidential documents," Longescu insisted.
However, "it is illegal, irresponsible and dangerous, regardless of whether the leaked material is diplomatic or military," she underlined.
Sensitive US diplomatic cables placed on the Internet show that most of the 200 US nuclear bombs still left in Europe are located in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey.
While these countries have raised the issue of disarmament, the precise location of these tactical bombs had not been made official prior to the latest leaks.
In the text files, a top Berlin official is logged as having told US counterparts it "made no sense to unilaterally withdraw 'the 20' tactical nuclear weapons still in Germany while Russia maintains 'thousands' of them."
He added that a "withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Germany and perhaps from Belgium and the Netherlands could make it very difficult politically for Turkey to maintain its own stockpile."
WikiLeaks at the weekend began releasing around 250,000 cables, after two other leaks this year involving hundreds of thousands of classified files on the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The whistleblowing site's Australian founder Julian Assange on Tuesday appealed to Sweden's Supreme Court to overturn a ruling he should be detained for questioning on allegations of rape.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Seoul rules out redeployment of US nuclear weapons

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Seoul_rules_out_redeployment_of_US_nuclear_weapons_999.html Seoul (AFP) Nov 23, 2010 South Korea's defence ministry Tuesday ruled out the redeployment of US nuclear weapons on its soil as a deterrent to North Korea, a day after its minister had raised the prospect. "Redeploying US tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea would cross the line set by the policy of denuclearising the Korean peninsula," Deputy Defence Minister Chang Kwang-Il told reporters.
"We've not considered redeploying US tactical nuclear weapons and there has been no consultation with the US over the issue," he was quoted as saying by a ministry spokesman.
The Pentagon also said Monday that the United States has no immediate plans to redeploy the weapons, which were withdrawn in 1991.
Revelations over the weekend about a new uranium enrichment plant in North Korea triggered alarm in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.
Asked in parliament Monday whether the South would consider asking for a redeployment, Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young told a lawmaker that the government "will review what you said".
His comment made front-page headlines in most newspapers Tuesday.
Chang said that the minister's comment had been taken out of context and meant that the South could consult with the US on "all possible options".
The United States still stations 28,500 troops in the South, but pulled out the atomic weapons as part of a disarmament initiative.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Soviet Nuclear Test Site Now A Model For Safeguards by Mike Shuster

Nobuhiro Muroya, the IAEA's senior official here, remarked on the irony of the region's history Thursday after the final seal was put in place.
"It is a coincidence that in this nuclear test site, it was more than 450 nuclear weapons tested. But this site is at the same time now very safe and very peaceful. And we would like this material to stay calm and peacefully for a long time," he said.

In This Series

Casks containing nuclear material in Aktau, Kazakhstan

Asia

Part 1: Kazakhstan Completes Move, Storage Of Nuclear Stash

Trains carrying casks of radioactive material from Atkau to an undisclosed location in northeast Kazakhstan

Asia

Part 2: Moving Kazakh Nuclear Cache A Massive Undertaking

That is the intention of the U.S. and Kazakhstan governments. The storage casks are designed to last half a century.

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/19/131449507/soviet-nuclear-test-site-now-a-model-for-safeguards

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Exclusive Report: Evidence of Iran Nuclear Weapons Program May Be Fraudulent

Exclusive Report: Evidence of Iran Nuclear Weapons Program May Be Fraudulent
Gareth Porter, Truthout: "The Obama administration says there can be no diplomatic negotiations with Iran unless Iran satisfies the IAEA fully in regard to the allegations derived from the documents that it had covert nuclear weapons program. That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are fabrications."
Read the Articlehttp://www.truth-out.org/the-iaea-and-fraudulent-iranian-nuclear-documents65241

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

NATO, Nuclear Security and the Terrorist Threat by Sam Nunn

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/opinion/17iht-ednunn.html?_r=1

Over the past two decades, no geopolitical space has undergone as dramatic a transformation as that between the Atlantic and the Urals. During the Cold War, a devastating conventional and nuclear war on the European continent was a very real possibility; today, no state faces this type of deliberate existential threat.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Is Our Nuclear Stockpile Safe? Questions For The Head of Global Strike Command

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/weapons/nuclear-global-strike-command-interview?click=pm_latest

Photo: Crews at Malmstrom Air Force Base fit a dummy nuclear warhead onto a missile. (Photo by Jonothan Targovnick)

Questions For Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, Head Of Global Strike Command -- Popular Mechanics

In 2011, nuclear weapons will take center stage of defense negotiations as the United States Senate debates the ratification of the New START treaty with Russia. The treaty will reduce the amount of warheads in the U.S. and Russian arsenals. But the nukes aren't going anywhere. In April the Obama administration released a Nuclear Posture Review, the third since the end of the Cold War, that says—somewhat in contrast to the president's oft-repeated desire to "work toward a world without nuclear weapons"—that U.S. policy is to retain its nuclear triad of bombers, ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles. "As long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States will sustain safe, secure and effective nuclear forces," it states. The security of those weapons has been questioned after an incident in late October knocked out communications between an underground launch center and the ICBMs. PM recently sat down at the Pentagon with Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, the commander of Global Strike Command, to discuss the state of America's nuclear arsenal, from the treaty tables to the missile silos.

Read more ....

Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Building cement 'prison' for old radioactive waste

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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Four-Year Nuclear Security Plan Needs More Detail, GAO Says

Monday, December 13, 2010

Friday, December 10, 2010

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Thursday, December 9, 2010

North Korea’s Newest Weapon: Nuke Torpedo?

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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Article Highlights

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Prioritizing Nuclear Nonproliferation

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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

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Saturday, November 20, 2010

In This Series

Thursday, November 18, 2010

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